Bad news for this Seagate?

The_Scotster said:

That's really not good. Is the drive still working? Pull the data as quick as you can. If it's not working, stick it in the freezer for a few hours and see what you can get from it.

Click to expand...

Oussebon said:

Thanks both for the feedback.

It's still working. Thankfully it doesn't have any 'data' on it that needs saving. Purely Steam downloads in case I want to play a title without waiting 3 days for the DL to finish on our snail-powered internet.

I've opened an RMA with the store I got it from and will see how it goes. Only got at the very end of Feb as an upgrade to my PCS system. 8TB Seagate Ironwolf bois...

Appreciate you taking the time to give it a listen! Rep to both.

Click to expand...

Oussebon said:

It will be interesting to put them to the test.

I only use it for storage on this PC and for file transfers of steam backups to one other system in the same household, always individually and never streaming media to multiple devices. The performance has been very strong and consistent with copying files off the disk, no drops even for large steam backups over 1gbps ethernet or copies to/from other sata devices in the same system.

It's been extremely noisy, however. Far louder than either the Toshiba N300 or WD Black in my system (granted much smaller capacities). Though that could always be down to a faulty unit.

View attachment 11611 View attachment 11612 View attachment 11613
LTR: Toshiba N300 4TB, Seagate 8Tb IW, Seagate 8TB IW on Sata 2 (3gbps) port

The only Sata 6gbps ports free on my PC when I got the Ironwolf were the ASMedia ones, which seemed to result in the IW being treated as a USB drive. Sometimes after resuming from sleep the system would recognise the drive but then disconnect it after a few seconds. I switched the drive to a 3gbps port and it fixed the problem, so I put it down to the ASMedia controller and the size of the drive... maybe some kind of power saving feature that disagrees with my system? I don't know how these things work...

I think the N300 is on one of the ASMedia sata ports and has always been fine with this.

I'd be unlikely to buy an IW again, given the noise, the issues with resuming from sleep, and my apparent bad luck with this unit.

Plus WD Red have 3 year warranties, which for a £200 HDD seems quite attractive to me right now.

Click to expand...

Oussebon said:

Correction to the above, they do have 3 year warranties it seems (Ironwolfs)

Contacted the vendor. Got an auto-ack of my ticket. Which I realised over a week later wasn't just an auto-ack but an auto "oh, you need to phone us to discuss this" :/
Phoned them. Got told it didn't sound good, in very generic terms, and was referred to Seagate for the warranty. They did at least helpfully put me through to Seagate's line directly, which was a nice touch.
Though not sure why they bother letting me create a ticket if a) for all HDD Clicking cases (a category selected by dropdown menu) they automatically insist the user phone, and b) they don't handle the warranties for Seagate drives. Their system could have known it was a Seagate drive since it was an item selected selected via my order history).

Having been put through to Seagate about 16:30 by the vendor, turns out Seagate's lines are only open 07:00 to 16:00.
Which I found out by googling, after following the automated Seagate switchboard only to arrive in the right place to me automatically told the lines were closed and then cut off...
Automated Seagate message did say they do most of their returns stuff online anyway.

So fine, registered the drive online with no problems.
Spent a while trying to create an RMA as one of the links that looked most promising kept leading me back to the same page over and over, forcing me to log into the same support page several times (i.e. log in, click link, click link, click link , same log in page I just logged into.. and then again several times until I tried something new...)
Note the 3 year warranty for the drive was until Dec 2020, not Feb 2021 (purchased late Feb 2018). Understandably as that's the date it left their factory. But there is no easy way to upload an invoice/ order details etc as there is for some other product registrations I've done.
Eventually found a way to make a warranty enquiry. I asked 1) if they can do an RMA 2) if they can do an advanced RMA as I don't have another 8TB drive lying around 3) if they could update the warranty date with the order details and invoice I attached
Got a reply back this morning. They noted the advanced RMA request, so clearly read the ticket I made. Then suggested I do a firmware update, supplying a link. The link was to a firmware from 2016, which funnily enough Seatools then confirmed was already what the drive had. And asked me to provide details of the purchase so they could validate the warranty. :/

So we're off to a flying start with the Seagate RMA process.

Click to expand...

Oussebon said:

They told me to disable certain power saving features, and provided the wrong instructions. But I was able to do it anyway by use of google to find the right commands instead (which I think were actually in that thread The_Scotster mentioned earlier). :/

The drive still makes periodic scratchy clicks, which I keep meaning to record before pursing this further with Seagate. But I frankly haven't had the energy and as I'm utterly sick of their stupidity I've half a mind to let the drive fail altogether so I don't get made to jump through more ridiculous hoops and deal with garbage instructions from incompetent staff that can't read or write.

They still haven't corrected the warranty date either.

I'm disgusted.

Click to expand...

Oussebon said:

I didn't say I was losing sleep, I was saying I was hacked off and wanted to have a a break from dealing with Seagate. Seriously, leave off, and don't talk down to me again. Preferably don't talk down to anyone else either.

Click to expand...